What the travel books don't say about France

By Paul SheehanApril 29 2002

France is more than flirting with extremist politics, but will weather the storm, as Australia's democratic stability transcended the media-driven Hanson phenomenon.

Ah, those lovable rascals of Provence. They helped make millions for Peter Mayle after he wrote A Year in Provence (1990), Toujours Provence, and a sequel to the sequel, Encore Provence. This is how the magic began:

"By 12.30 the little stone-walled restaurant was full. There were some serious stomachs to be seen - entire families with the embonpoint that comes from spending two or three diligent hours every day at the table, eyes down and conversation postponed in the observance of France's favorite ritual. The proprietor's moustache, sleek with pomade, quivered with enthusiasm as he rhapsodised over the menu: foie gras, lobster mousse, beef en croute, salads dressed in virgin oil, hand-picked cheeses, desserts of a miraculous lightness, digestifs ...

"We had been here often before as tourists, desperate for our annual ration of two or three weeks of true heat and sharp light. Always when we left we promised ourselves that one day we would live here. We had looked with an addict's longing at photographs of village markets and vineyards ... And now, somewhat to our surprise, we had done it. We had committed ourselves. We had bought a house, taken French lessons, said our goodbyes, shipped over our two dogs, and become foreigners."

What Mayle never conveyed were the more gritty functional realities. Last week, those colourful Provencals voted for Jean-Marie Le Pen, the head of the anti-immigration National Front, as their candidate for this weekend's 2002 presidential election. The heart of travel-book country has become the heart of his vote. Around Nice and Cannes he won 26 per cent of the vote. In Marseilles, with the heaviest concentration of Arabs and Africans, 23 per cent. He led the vote across the south, the entire eastern flank, the northern rust belt.");document.write("

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Analysing the victory, John Vinocur, writing in the International Herald Tribune dared to swim among the sharks of taboo: "The rise of crime in France ... is one of the areas of French life where everybody senses the extent of the problem but politicians shut up about the deepest nature of the causes ... The evidence is simple: a steep increase in the crime rate since 1998, the year after the socialist government of Lionel Jospin came into power ... The causes, in contrast, are regarded across the political spectrum as dangerous to discuss, with at least two of the central aspects embedded in zones of profound national taboo: a tacit legitimisation of violence as one of French life's banalities ... and the disproportionately large role ... played by young men of Arab immigrant origin in the rise in crime and disorder."

This view is supported by a former chief superintendent of France's police intelligence agency, Lucienne Bui Trong: "The reality is, there's a traditional element of French culture that values violent conflict. The revolution, demos, confrontation. If you don't begin there, you're not dealing with the problem."

That France is more than flirting with extremism is supported by the numbers: the hard Right vote won 23.4 per cent in last week's presidential run-off, while the various Trotskyists and Communists won a combined 21.4 per cent. "The astounding fact about Sunday's election," wrote Andrew Neil, former editor of the Sunday Times, "is that almost one in two of everybody who voted did so for either fascist or Marxist candidates, an unprecedented endorsement of extremism in the modern history of western Europe.'

Why? "Where I live in the supposedly affluent south of France," wrote Neil, "fear of burglary or attack is constant and pervasive. The crime wave now sweeping France is the No 1 topic of conversation at the dinner tables of rich and poor alike."

"There is just such an enormous gulf between Paris and what is happening here on the ground," French official Bernard Baumelou told the Independent. "Socialist ministers had been talking about making immigration rules more flexible. And here we are with young north Africans turning to fundamentalist Islam, with immigrants who were once integrated now un-integrating themselves, and our crime problem escalating out of all proportion."

Personally, as a Francophile, I think the greatness of France will transcend this boilover, just as Australia's democratic stability transcended the media-driven hysteria over Pauline Hanson, though France's problems are far deeper than Australia's. The conservative President Chirac is expected to win re-election by a landslide but, in the spirit of this year's anti-moderation, he has refused to debate Le Pen: "There can be no dealing, no compromise, no debate with intolerance and hatred."

To which Le Pen has replied: "I've been asking myself what excuse Chirac was going to find to disguise his pitiful evasion. If the President of the Republic doesn't have the guts to meet the adversary the people have designated, then he should change the people."